YAR!

So, I've been slacking in my blogging, just been doing the notes. I have a really hard time doing the whole blogging thing, perhaps because I'm just not that interesting. So, instead, I wrote a poem.

A Thousand Job(s)

I hear the cries of a thousand Jobs.
If you will excuse the odd plurality

I hear the children crying for mothers
The men and women who've lost brothers
The Musicians who've been struck deaf
unable to hear the tiniest, most sublime clef
Loving, caring people, lost without a reason
Swept away, like the passing of a season

What to do? Where to go?
Everywhere is the black crow
Waiting to strike without warning or cause
Truth be told, there is no saving clause

Is there?

Maybe.
Maybe within yourself.
Maybe within the human seated next to you.
Maybe we can find it.
Maybe.

Or maybe it is all vanity.
Vanity of vanities, if you will.

Class Summary for 10/27/09

Assignment: TERM PAPER

1. Way in which the Bible relates to The Slave
2.  What I know now that I didn't know before, and the difference that makes. (There needs to be at least two Great Code references)
3. Whatever you would like to write on that Dr. Sexson has approved.

CLASS

• Natalie's Blog, Alex's Blog, Eric's Blog, Jessi's Blog
• The Year of Living Biblically
• We are all thieves, stealing from someone who stole.
• Joni Mitchell, "The Sire of Sorrow"
• A Serious Man, the Coen Brothers
• The best part of Job?
• The middle.
• The prologue is: there's a man named Job, he's a good guy, but he suffers.
• The epilogue: he's patient, and he is rewarded.
• The middle is the best (Job 3).
• You get the frienimies, and all the false hope, the idea of retributive justice is presented, and Job curses the day he was born.
• Job is very similar to a Greek tragedy. (Prometheus Bound)
• People come and talk to him.
• My Dinner with Andre
• According to Job, the first best thing is to have never been born, and the next best is to die.
• Job 4:7
• Retributive Justice -- God only punishes the wicked, rewards the wise and good.
• WRONG!

 

Class Summary for 10/20/09 and 10/22/09

TUESDAY

• Writing lets everyone know what to do--the repetitive oral tradition.
• pg. 50 Frye
• The blacks feel a connection with the enslaved Jews.
• There are probably three factual words in the New Testament.
• Weltgeschichte - world history, factual
• Heilgechichte - holy history
• Israelites figured out that you don't have to keep God in centralized place.
• William Faulkner, Absulon is killed.
• Ernest Hemingway, The Son Also Rises
• Nova's The Bible's Buried Secrets.
• The Book of Joshua is a military book. (the hill of foreskins)
• Wisdom of Solomon
• Dead Sea Scrolls
• Job 
• The nature of suffering: theodicy.
• He is blameless and upright, greatest of all people (if greatness is determined by wealth)
• Patience of Job?
• He's not that patient...

THURSDAY

• History is His-story
• The stories are what save the Jews, not history.
• First king of Israel--Saul
• Saul isn't that great, he's replaced by David.
• For next test, we need to know Ch. 5 from Frye.
• Proverbs 19:18
• Spare the rod, spoil the child.
• Prudential vs. Skeptical
• Skeptical Wisdom - there's gotta be a reason, the ticket story from Karamatzov
  
• William Blake's Job art and poem.
• Wisdom isn't necessarily knowledge.
• Frye's V-shaped narrative.
  

Class Summary for 10/15/09

• Deuterotomy is a book of law. (2nd Law, to be exact)
• D 6:4, "The Lord our God is one Lord.
• Moses's mythical authorial power.
• Law has a story element, it's a subset of literature.
• Michelangelo's sculpture of Moses has horns. (Likely from seeing God's backside)
• Because the bible says it, it obviously must be true.
• There are three versions of the Ten Commandments.
• http://www.stallman.org/dr-laura.html
• The Year of Living Biblically
• Lev 18:22, (The hot button issue, gay marriage)
• Deuteronomy 23
• New assignment--be less boring.
• Epiphany - a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being.
• You cannot remarry, the woman is defiled.
• Theodicy - The vindication of divine goodness and providence in view of the existence of evil.
• This is what Job is all about.
  

Peter Quince at the Clavier

To make a complete analysis of Wallace Stevens's poem, I think you might have to be much smarter than I am; but, I found the parts relating to the elders very interesting, considering the book of Susannah as a referent.

The elders in the story are very lustful (as is typical with men who aren't heroes, and are faced with a beautiful woman), and because they are rebuked by the noble Susannah, they become vengeful, and try to destroy her. But, the Lord helps Susannah, and all is well. While this story is an interesting, and a very fun read, it doesn't reach the intellectual and emotional level that Stevens's poem achieves.

Take, for instance, these lines:

 

Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings

Of those white elders; but, escaping,

Left only Death's ironic scraping.

 

This poem strikes a chord with me, conjuring an image of youth and beauty, and its finiteness. The poem doesn't seem to be judging the lustful elders, so much as reminding us all of what beauty is, and, in the lines of the poem:

The body dies; the body's beauty lives

Class Summary for 10/13/09

Assignments: Read the Book of Susannah (1637), read the poem on Rio's blog.

• Dialectic arguments combined with tradition.
• The old stories are the best stories.
• Plotz's problem?
• He applies a modern sensibility to a book of stories.
• Moses
• Superman? Superman comes from a destroyed people (Jews) and leads humanity.
• Moses is an archetype, he's paradigmatic.
• His name means to be "drawn from the waters".
  
• Lord Raglan 
• The 22 points of the typical hero story.
• Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces
• Once again, stories are important.
• The Israelites were just as cruel to their slaves as anyone else.
• They also didn't intermarry.
• "Go Down Moses"
• Louis Armstrong
• Paul Robeson 
• Ralph Stanley, "Take Your Shoes off Moses"
• Iconoclasm - rejection of religious icons as heretical.
• "God cannot be made into an image!"
• Passage where Moses sees God's backside: Exodus 33:23
  

Test!

FOR THE TEST

• Genesis
• Classroom Discussions
• Frye, Ch. 1 & 2
• Women In the Bible Lecture
• Plotz - Genesis

QUESTIONS
1. Who are the two writers of the creation story?
P and J. (Remember JEDPR)
2. What are the first five books of the bible?
Pentateuch, the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy)
3. TNK?
Torah (Law) Nevi'im (Prophets) Ketuvim (Writings)
4. Who are the three patriarchs?
Abraham, Issac, Jacob
5. How many sons did Jacob have?
12, Rachel had Joseph and Benjamin.
6. What did Linda think of women in the bible, compared to David Plotz?
Linda: "Plotz is an idiot, women are a metaphor."
7. What does Hosea's marriage represent?
Israel, and the country's straying from God.
8. Linda's view of Lot's daughters?
They did the right thing, continued the bloodline of their father.
9. What are the 7 most important parts of the bible?
Creation, Exodus, Law, Wisdom, Prophecy, Gospel, Apocalypse.
10. Vico's 3 phases? 
Gods/Heroes/Men
11. Frye's 3 phases?
Metaphorical/Metonymical/Descriptive
12. What is Mythos?
Story, myth, etc.
13. What kills education?
Answers
14. What is repetitive parallelism?
"Joseph is handsome and good-looking."
15. What is the biblical meaning of circumcision?
It is a physical reminder of the covenant between God and man.
16. What is the difference between Homer and the Bible?
Homer has no lacuna!
17. What is kerygma?
Revalation
18. What is logos?
Fact, truth, history, etc., for a while it was the same as mythos.
19. What is the psyche?
Before it came to its modern definition, it meant "soul".
20. What is an example of etiology?
"How did the leopard get his spots?" "Why do snakes crawl on their bellies?"
21. What is an archetype?
A "model narrative", Carl Jung - Cain (archetype of the fugitive)
22. What is Gnosticism?
Places salvation in knowledge/individual (The Man Who Fell to Earth)
23. Critical approach vs. Traditional?
Literary approach vs. a faith based approach.
24. What is hubris?
Excessive pride, wishing to be like the gods.
25. What is the documentary hypothesis?
The Bible was written by multiple authors.
26. What blogs should we study?
Jason's (Occam's Razor)
27. What were the writing prophets concerned with?
Cultic purity and Social Justice.
28. Eve and Mary are both archetypes.

A good moment...

There are times, upon reading this massive text, that I am taken aback by the profoundness of certain passages. This particular one is in Numbers 6:22:


The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon
you, and be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up his countenance upon 
you, and give you peace.

I don't know exactly what it is about this passage that makes me calm, maybe that last part, about the countenance lifting--but I find myself reading this passage over and over again, and I love it!

Class Summary for 10/1/09

Guest Lecture!

 "Women in the Bible"

• Women are a metaphor in the Bible
• humans that are designated female by culture; no biology.
• There is a difference between social and literary conditions.
• Eve is a metaphor.
• Menstruation in the Bible is a social condition.
• Patriarchy, Chauvinism
• Gender asymmetry
• Male metaphors are on top. Women are deceptive.
• The culture was worried about controlling the women.
• The Patriarchs: Abraham, Issac, and Jacob.
• "Man and Wife". Wife is the appendage of man.
• Women are ambivalent in a patriarchy.
• Teraphim (household gods)
• Lev 15:19 - Why menstruation is "unclean".
• "Test"ament - this is where vows are made in a patriarchy, circumcision is a vow.
• Judges 11:29: Jephthah's daughter dies to preserve the vow.
• Prophets
• Hosea 1:2
• Marries a woman with a social stigma.
• Women are metaphors for Israel, trying to worship Canaanite and Mesopotamian gods.
  

Class Summary for 09/29/09

1st Exam, 8th of October
Read to Chapter 3 in Northrop Frye.

• Cheat Sheet for Odysseus Scar.
• Hermeneutics
• "Cities of the Plain" (Sodom and Gomorrah, Gen 19)
• Marcel Proust, Cormac McCarthy
• Kierkegard - Fear and Trembling
• NEVER SAY "JUST"
• Abraham talks down God!
• Lot's Wife!
• Orpheus, Actaeon
• Literalism in the bible?
• Issac isn't really that exciting (Gen 24).
• James Joyce: "Bland old Issac."
• Jacob gets the "bed trick" pulled on him.
• Gen 32.22
• Joseph is kinda of a dork; he is one of the round characters (complex)
• Joseph and Potiphars wife (Gen 39)

Little tired, hopefully will get a good blog post in soon.